Ambivalence is like standing on the fence of the “undecided”. If I lean too far toward hope, I might tip the scales for fear of waking disappointment. And if I lean too far into doubt, my heart begins to grow cold and bitter. So it feels safer, more “righteous”, to stay numb. Indifferent. Because sometimes I’m afraid of my own pain.

But what happens when I invite ambivalence to make its home in me is that I begin to feel heavy inside…like a lingering cloud has seeped in and it surrounds me. It feels dark and gloomy, but not evil. It is so subtle. I wonder if it’s depression or anxiety, and sometimes it can take me there. But the subtle squeezing of darkness inside begins to isolate me, and tell me I’m all alone. It swallows my hope with file folders of evidence proving its existence. I feel trapped, stuck, and powerless. It pushes me further inside as if to retreat ~ somehow escaping the realities I’m facing. Pilot mode comes on and I am a walking zombie…disconnected from myself but continuing to put on the show.

That subtle low lying dark cloud inside is like a silent bondage.

We usually only consider bondage to be an outright evil sin found on the checklist of “wrongs”. But biblically, bondage is a yoke ~ a heaviness that is hung low in order to keep us in a state of striving all alone. We’re on our own again…it’s up to me to figure this out…it’s hopeless unless I fix it, or it cannot be fixed…and the weight of the world is on my shoulders. Bondage.

When I feel this inside- I can’t find Him. I can’t see where He is and I am usually wrestling deeply with hopelessness. I feel abandoned and alone. By everyone. And the circumstances set before me look like a mountain too big to even climb.

The most powerful thing I can do is ask for help. Out loud. To God. To a friend. To a counselor. But just saying it out loud aligns me with my truest self that has felt left in the cold, underneath the bondage I chose to wrap around myself. It breaks ties. It stops me In my tracks and rethinks my position, admitting that this path of self sufficiency isn’t all it was cracked up to be. Sometimes the heaviest bondage we can find ourselves in, is the one that makes us our own god. A god who doesn’t need help, that no one else understands and that we need to protect.

But when I ask for help, it humbles me. It usually melts my hardened heart and returns sadness back to a place where anger had its grip. In grieving, scales begin to fall off my eyes and I can see through a renewed lens. As the song says, “I have made you too small in my eyes…oh lord forgive me. I have believed in the lie ~ that you were unable to help me “ . He gets magnified again. Because I’m not god, but He is. And even when I can’t feel Him, He is close.